


When Gods Walk the Earth

by aionimica



Category: The Grisha Trilogy - Leigh Bardugo
Genre: F/M, Mal is dead
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-24
Updated: 2016-08-07
Packaged: 2018-06-04 06:04:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 7,322
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6644284
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aionimica/pseuds/aionimica
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Mal’s dead and Alina finds herself in the hands of the enemy. </p><p>Inspired by the Six of Crows line. “But they’re very good at killing each other. They call it ‘like calls to like.’”</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Part One

* * *

 

“I’m just a widow!” she yelled.

No one heard. At least if they did no one replied. The only slammed the great door shut, leaving her in shallow darkness. A lurch nearly knocked her off her feet as the cage’s wheels rocked against the weary road. Alina sat herself down on the cold iron floor as the horses pulled them away.

She sighed. It was a lie anyways. She could claim she was a widow, that her husband had died in the civil war, but she was not the only maid to have lost a man without a ceremony and was holding onto a scrap of dignity. Alina told herself there were other reasons, but she knew that was how she kept him alive: he always said he would marry her. At least in death she could give him this honor.

Through the thin slats near the ceiling, she watched as Keramzin pulled further into the distance. When the apple tree passed, she nearly cried. Stray tears escaped her as she kissed her fingertips, letting the farewell fly through the bars.

_Goodbye MaI._

If she was lucky the iron cage would be stopped and they would notice the girl inside. But luck was never on her side. Since the day on the Fold, luck was never something she could claim, for only death and the devil seemed to pay her any mind. What more do false saints deserve?

As if the saints deserted her and luck waved farewell, the iron cage rattled through the countryside undisturbed. Day after day it went on, carrying her far away. On the occasions they let her out to relieve herself, Alina watched as the hardwoods gave way to pines and evergreens and those gave way to shrubs and permafrost. Soon they left all that behind, leading to the great snows of the frozen north, the warm sun of Ravka growing foreign and distant and cold.

Sometimes she thought she saw the devil through the bars, but her demon died years ago on a scrap of dead earth with a knife in his chest. His power had left her when hers flew away and he breathed his last, but her demon would always lay claim to her fate. If she closed her eyes, Alina could still hear his words, see his two thrones, feel his collar on her neck. _It may well take me another lifetime to break you, Alina, but I will put my mind to the task._

She would be lying if she said she did not miss him. She hated herself for that. But false saints could expect no more comfort from demons - he was keeping his promise long after death.

Her captors hardly spoke, and never directly to her. They only gestured with the butt of their guns, striking out if she did not move fast enough. Occasionally one would slip, letting through a bit of Ravkan and her ears heard the word “ _grisha_.” Alina was too tired to laugh at her fate. She should have died on the Fold. If she recognized the accents, which she was nearly one hundred percent sure were Fjerdan, and if the progressive freezing of the landscape was not enough of a clue, Alina welcomed the cold dread erupt at the center of her chest.

The iron cage moved forward despite the snows and as the cold wind swept the iron box, Alina knew she would never sit beneath the apple tree at Keramzin again. For only death awaited those marked by _grisha_ in the north. It was said they burned them on the pyres.

“At least it will be a warm death,” she mused.

She had lost count of the days she had been captive. When the iron cage stopped that morning, Alina guessed it had been a week. Two weeks? She caught a glimpse of herself in a water pail. Her white hair threatened to blend in with the snow, but it was streaked with dirt and grime. Her braid had long since fallen and loose strands brushed about her face. Her cheekbones stood out in contrast to the valleys in her face. When they pulled her out, her legs barely stood. Ana Kuya’s proverbs echoed in her mind, an ironic retort given her situation: _man does not live on bread alone._

Standing inside the frozen Fjerdan border, Alina threatened to topple over. A gust of wind could have knocked her down. She hated the waif she had become. The blond soldiers pushed her forward away from the iron cage, steering her towards a small camp. Her heart sank. She had never been a true fighter - her fight was of a different kind - but she knew her way around a knife, but the number of men doubled as they approached the camp and the shackles on her arms tightened. A bag was shoved over her head. She stumbled barefoot through the snow, only by the grip on her arms did she stay standing.

Curt words in a harsh tongue lashed out as the man leading her halted.

“She’s - right age - found - place.” She caught their words in spurts, bits of rudimentary Fjerdan crawling back from her months in the Little Palace.

Another man spoke, his voice the first she heard on the fall day so few weeks ago. The one who pulled her from the garden and sent the children running. “She matches - description. Intercepted - King - confirms.”

The urge to stand up straight at the mention of Nikolai was almost too much to bear. He had offered her his kingdom. She had declined and celebrated with the nation when he took Zoya as his queen. She had cried when she was all alone. But he was not a traitor, he would not betray her. A stray shadow of a smile crossed her lips at the thought of him raising an army to bring her back.

It faded when she remembered she was not a saint, not a soldier. Just a widow in an old house with demons in her woods, a dead man under her apple tree. She was no one worth saving. Her resolve strengthened at the thought. In the end she prefered dying alone. Few would mourn her anyway. She had already died once. Let her join the martyr on the dead sands.

One voice rose over the rest, hard and rough, edged with shards of winter’s cruel winds. He spoke in crisp Ravkan. “You told me you found the Sun Summoner. The illustrious Sankta Alina.”

His men remained silent. The bag was removed in one clean pull. Alina did not wince as some of her hair went with it. One of the Fjerdan men pulled her close, his grip on her arms tight. She tried to keep the fear from her eyes, but staring into the man’s cold depths and without the warmth at her fingers, she knew her fate was sealed. He looked at her as if she was a curiosity, an anomaly. Something that tainted this world.

_If only you knew._

“They say Sankta Alina perished on the Fold at the hands of the Darkling. Her martyrdom.” He was speaking in Ravkan. He was speaking for her. Alina’s eyes narrowed. The man continued. “Rumors persisted of a girl with white hair in an old house. Some would say it is a coincidence. I do not believe in such things. Summon.”

Alina did not move. The man stepped over and grabbed a fistful of hair, pulling tight, forcing her face to his.

“Summon.”

She splayed her fingers and tried as she did every night, but nothing answered. Not even her desire to Cut this man down would bring her gift back to her.

Quickly the man waved over one of his men, a small pouch in his hands. Still holding her hair, he took it and held it in front of her nose.

“Do you know what this is?”

The scent was _jurda_. Though her time in the Little Palace was fleeting, she had run across enough men and women looking for additions in their life. The spice filled some of the holes. The man watched her closely, waiting, blue eyes hunting for answers. Alina would not give him the satisfaction of her words. She only stared.

“If you are who I think you are, then you know of _jurda_. I doubt a Saint would have soiled herself with such stimulants, but know what you are about to taste is only a fraction of what we can give you. The _jurda parem_  is a powerful master.” He leaned his head in, his voice curling in her ear. Alina stood firm, closing her eyes, trying not to move away. “I am about to give your world back to you Sankta. Remember my gratitude.”

Suddenly strong hands held her face and pulled her mouth open, pouring its contents down her throat. The first taste rolled down her lips, sweet as honey, filling her as fully and as completely as breath fills her lungs. For a moment, for one aching horrible moment, she was the same as she had always been: empty, broken, alone. The man’s voice reached into her head once again.

“ _Summon_.”

When it came it was not a call. It was not a warmth from her toes, a reassurance of nature. No, it was a command and Alina could not bring herself to disobey. She opened her eyes and the world exploded in an array of light.

A sun suddenly burned overhead despite the Fjerdan winter, echoing the fiery core in the center of her chest. Her fingertips exploded with light, each a ray dazzling out in front of her. It burned and burned and burned and for a brief moment Alina felt the threat of pain.

Then her two legs stood firm and the weariness departed and with a flick of her wrist, her shackles fell to the ground, soldered with precision. The soldiers stepped back, a few reaching for their guns, but the man who spoke in Ravkan held them back.

“Give her space. Give her time. It will wear off in a few hours and then Fjerda will have its weapon. Sankta -”

He was rendered in two before his pleas reached her ears. The cries of his men were chants of mercy as they ran across the snow. Casting out her hand she brought down trees, blocking them in. She owed them none.

Alina turned her golden eyes to the scattered regiment, her lip curling in disgust as they raised their rifles. Once she would have tremored in front of a firing squad. Now she grinned hungrily. When the hammers hit the ignition, she stole their spark, their light and turned it into infernos. They burned where they stood.

She ran before their husks began to smolder.

She ran and did not stop. The sun was her fire, her fuel, its rays building her up and pushing her onward. Years later peasants would share stories of the day when sun gods walked the earth, their feet leaving scorching marks on the permafrost. It was only appropriate. She was tireless, she was endless. Her scope reached as far as the eye could see, whatever the light touched was hers to command, hers to Cut and burn. She was an event horizon, a nexus of light and energy. When she passed a statue bearing her likeness, she resisted the urge to topple it down. She was no longer a saint, she was no longer a soldier.

She was a god.

Days passed and the permafrost gave way to the iced plains of Tsbeya. Each day her barefeet burned into the ground and each day she pushed forward to a beacon in the distance. _Jurda parem_ was what the man called it - the drug that they forced on her, that turned her into _this_. She roared with the power of stars, but she offered no thanks to anyone. A god had no need of others. The soldier had said it would take only hours for the high to wear off. At this point for her it had been weeks. Fourteen days since the _jurda parem_ passed her lips and her skin burned bright even under the cover of darkness. It took her fifteen to find him.

He was sitting under the shade of a pine, grey woolen cloaks wrapped around him, his black hair pulled back and his grey eyes closed. But even in this state, she could feel him across miles. A dark beacon in her world of light. A thin trail of what he once was, but her demon called to her all the same.

He did not wake when she stood at his feet, head tilted in curiosity. Slowly she leaned forward and tapped him on the nose, a racing thrill rushing through her at the touch. His grey eyes opened and instinctively his hands raised in the Cut, but he froze at the sight of her.

Alina Starkov, Sun Summoner, Saint and God stood before the Darkling, a smile on her face.

His voice was an ancient river across smooth stones. It never failed to thrill her. “What happened to you?”

Alina realized she was glowing. She dimmed her light, vaguely aware of the circles under his eyes and the frailty in his stance. She was not the only one to have lost dearly on the Fold.

“What do demons fear?” she asked. The fire in her burned bright, flushing her cheeks. She looked on her demon.

“Alina,” he growled. Alina almost delighted in the exchange. She would be lying if she said she did not crave his touch.

She leaned forward and pressed a finger to his lips. “What do demons fear?” she asked again.

He looked at her with hard eyes. An ache started to form in her bones, a sweat on her brow. Gently she reached to her belt, keeping her touch firm on his skin. She had ran from the Fjerdans - ran hard and fast - but not before she stole the spice from their burning beds. They had given her a taste, they had given her enlightenment and she would not go back. 

The _parem_ was sweet in the air as she opened the pouch. The Darkling stilled at her touch and she whispered in his ear.  “ _Gods_ …”

He took it from her willingly.

* * *

 


	2. Part Two

The Darkling is a man of many things, many talents. Many impossibilities. He has lived a thousand lifetimes, died a thousand deaths. He created abominations and gave hope to those who had none, he took the dark of the world and molded it to his bidding. He should not be alive - and not for the first time - but here he was on the frost ridden plains in a life that should not be his, staring into the face of a woman who should not exist.

Still here she was, with her finger on his lips and a smile on her face, melting the snow with the soles of her feet.

Alina had learned the art of impossibilities, it seemed.

When she first appeared like a vision in the snow, he wanted to do many things. He had a knife at his hip and the cold bit of steel in his own chest was a memory hard to forget. But the blazing light that fell around her begged caution and the Darkling vaguely wondered what forsaken god or unholy saint Alina bartered with to bring back such radiance, and stayed his hand. When she touched his lips, he silenced, any appeals to her presence frozen by her touch. He wanted to pull away from the might of the sun, but his body was unwilling, hypnotized by the sight of her.

Her dress was ragged, it’s hems soiled and torn. Once it might have been a shade of green, but now he could only see hints of its former color through the sun bleached grey. Her white hair hung around her, it’s ends marred with dirt, but up by her crown it radiated with light.

Though he looked upon a woman, instead he saw a second sun, the light of the earth surrounding her in a cloud of glories.

She did not say his name, but he knew hers and it took all of him to keep from saying it in her light. She was a thing of visions and broken futures. Memories fade, but those that included her were sharp in his mind. He does not remember his birth. None of them, in actuality. He had been born and died so many times across the centuries that they blurred together in flashes of light. He wished he remembered what his story was in this past life, but they’re all cast aside as the Darkling consumes them. The end result is always the same.

His deaths are more to his liking. There was an art to dying: fabricating death came to him as easy as breathing. His last was his masterpiece. It would be centuries before he would rise again, but he could wait.

Could have waited. Would have waited.

She always changed his plans.

“What do demons fear?” she asked, her lips quirked into a playful grin. He wanted them to waste to nothing.  

“Alina.” He did not have to search for the hidden meaning. His gaze hardened at her apparent pleasure. She had never hid her dislike of him. Even through their bond that stretched across the miles, despite the thrill that she could never resist whenever he showed his face, the Darkling never forgot the rouse of distaste that came alongside it, as real as his own. Calling him a demon was one of the lesser insults she once hurled at him. It was not dislike on her face now. No, it was fascination: delight at what he had come.

Shadows clung to him in the days since the Fold, but they no longer grew and fell at his beck and call. No they hovered just beyond his reach and though some strained at his pull, it was nothing like before. Fatigue plagued him and for once the Darkling resisted cursing the _otkazat’sya_ that he so resembled.

“What do demons fear?” she asked again.

He feared many things and the answers came eagerly at her request. They came to his mind in a wave of images: eternity alone, a final breath, the blade of a knife, the scent of her hair-  He blinked, silencing the thoughts.

They were long past games and he would not play hers. He nearly stood when she reached into her belt and pulled out the pouch. When the scent reached him, he nearly recoiled but her finger on his lips held him captive. The Darkling was a man of many things, many impossibilities and one weakness.

And when she whispered in his ear, her breath warm and roving across his skin he did not breathe.

“ _Gods_ ,” she said and the Darkling was powerless before her.

* * *

 

_Jurda parem._

He knew what it was as soon as the scent reached him. He had heard whispers of the drug from the borders of Shu Han. Only rumors, but the Darkling was more than aware how much truth a rumor could hold. It reached his ears late in the civil war, but it had only been a fairy tale. He could have laughed - fairy tales had no room for reality, though it seemed reality made way for them.

Alina would later tell him she felt enlightenment, the immediate pull of suns and stars and the reflection of their light on the world impossible to ignore. Enlightenment was not the word he would use. No, enlightenment was petty for a man who could call his lifetime a millennia. Enlightenment came centuries prior. The parem was something different, something new.

Time slid to a crawl as it slid down his throat. The taste was was spiced honey, warmth crawling down his extremities with a vengeance quickly giving way to the familiar chill that came with his allegiance to the night. She said she saw the sun and stars in the sky, felt their power across a million miles. He felt the vast spaces, the great reaches of space and the utter dark that rested in between stars and galaxies.

He had meant to whisper but when he did it come in peals of thunder, his words cracks of lightening. The voice of gods.

“What happened?”

Alina shrugged. Her eyes were wide, pupils dark pools rimmed with gold. She looked otherworldly, a goddess among mortals. “ _Drüskelle_. Came for me at Keramzin weeks ago. They fed me the parem and asked for something I could not give.”

His eyes narrowed. She pursed her lips and turned away. “I took care of them.”

“Oh?”

“They wanted a weapon. The Sankta on their side.” Her face contorted and her words flecked with bitterness.

The Darkling fully expected to feel anger, but instead he felt a pleasing disinterest. The _parem_ filled in his chest, the boundless dark of the world aching at his fingertips. Rather than boundless anger, he felt the curious desire to smother something. It was a smooth feeling. “Their side of what?”

“I don’t know. I am a widow, Aleksander. I ran an orphanage. I paid no attention to the dealings of Fjerda.” She looked at him expectantly. “Don’t tell me you have been deaf as well as blind since the Fold.”

The thrill that ran down his spine at his name on her lips was not welcome or expected. It had been years since she last whispered it in his ears. It troubled him that he craved to hear it again. His lips curled in a snarl. “You were not the only one who lost that day, Alina.”

“Apparently not enough.” She looked him over before turning west, her feet leaving pools of melted frost in her wake. With a flick of her fingers, a beam of light shot a hole in a tree above his head. Embers dropped in his hair.

Smothering Fjerda seemed fair enough payment for bringing her back to him.

* * *

 

She came back to him later. It was hard not to be curious of the schism in the earth carved by smoking shadows. It carved across Ravka for near a quarter of a mile and that was without exerting. The man in him nearly went weak in the knees, but the god stood tall. The spaces of the universe smiled. Alina raised an eyebrow as he summoned wisps of shadow. They curled around his hands, pleasing as pups. She walked from the schism’s edge, folding her arms.

“No _nichevo'ya_?”

“Not yet,” he replied smoothly. He nearly tried, but as he felt the pull of _merzost_ he paused. What would a god create when a mere man conjured ghosts? For once the Darkling was not willing to find out. Not yet. “Are you surprised?”

“Curious. Restraint is not something you’re known for.”

“You think you know me so well.”

“Don’t I?” Alina asked.

The Darkling smiled. She did, more than she probably knew. “Only what I have shown, Alina.”

She pursed her lips and sat on her heels, watching him with the unhuman eyes, taking him in. “No _merzost_ ,” she said finally, standing tall. “No more.”

He wanted to decline, but the Darkling only nodded and moved to her side. “And if I refuse?”

She smiled. “Then I will kill you where you stand.”  
  
The Darkling grinned. He had no doubt.

* * *

 

The _parem_ lasted three weeks before the sweat came on their brows and an ache filled their bones and a paralyzing need started to thread through their thoughts. Alina held the _parem_ in her possession but as each day went by they did not have to look at each other to know their supply was dwindling.

She once asked what Fjerda was planning. The Darkling only shrugged. Fjerda was always planning and their _drüskelle_ were always hunting. Their end game was always changing, but the attempt to reanimate a Sankta was a worrisome mention. Not as worrisome as the nagging threat of the clench of parem and their dwindling suppy.

Slowly they made their way across the tundra, back across the long miles to the burnt husk of a camp where an iron cage was left rusting in the snow. Ever the mapmaker Alina led the way, follow the pull of the earth aligned with its poles. When he asked why, she shrugged.

“They had it once, they would know where to find it again.”

Together they stretched and learned. Once she cast a beam of light that severed a fir behind him, only stopped by a shadow hard as a knife. He would slice at her back, cutting the earth with shades, her light forcing them ever and ever back. Occasionally under the light of the auroras their confrontations would light the sky, explosions that left their ears ringing and the mountains echoing. 

“Nikolai would call them bombs,” she would say. He would only sigh. 

Blood was a common sight on them, never quite able to Cut the other, but always close enough to feel the pain. In previous lives they were hard to kill. Now it seemed impossible, but the temptation was always there. 

They carved swaths of terrain in Ravka’s north and Fjerda’s east. Just the act of walking was destruction. The tundra burned under her feet and froze at the brush of his hands. Dark is cold, he learned pleasantly. A shadow from his hand cured the embers left by her skin.

* * *

 

Finding a _drüskelle_ was not difficult. Spreading rumors of a Darkling and Sun Summoner in each village they passed was easy bait and they half expect to receive the might of Fjerda unleashed at once. In the end, they were nearly disappointed at the mere battalion and ten _drüskelle_ sent to retrieve them. Letting themselves be bound and shackled across the snows, sweat on their brows and with ragged breath and haggard eyes, they were led into the mountains as a great structure rose.

The outpost was stocked, the scent of the _parem_ overwhelming, even from a distance. Its scent was enough to send his mind racing. He was out of his bonds first, the steel cracking in the shade of his fingers, the cold shattering it clean. He turned to Alina, but she stood alone, the bonds cut through with the might of the sun. Fjerda asked for a Sankta and she returned with her demon. Gods are not always kind. The sight of Cut and burning bodies littered in their wake as the outpost became theirs.

Alina stopped when she crossed the threshold, a hand rising to her mouth. A small sound escaped and unwillingly the Darkling felt a part of him break. When he came to her side, what was left of his heart hardened. He had heard these rumors for a long time. _Drüskelle_ were nearly as old as him and their threat just as sinister, but the evidence of their actions awoke an ache that cried across centuries.

 _Kefta_ hung in the rafters, carefully kept and maintained, as perfect as the day they were made. Only scorch marks and ancient stains told the tales of how their owners died. If they stood close enough the story was written in blood and fire. It crossed his mind to send a prayer for the Grisha, but the only one who would have listened stood next to him threatening to go supernova.

Packs heavy laden with precious cargo, the Darkling stood as Alina burned the outpost, rock heated to blistering temperatures. Her eyes were red as they walked away and the Darkling felt the rather human urge to hold her hand. It crossed his mind he never told her about _drüskelle_ in all their might. A year was such a short time to learn about the world. Vaguely he wondered if would have changed anything.

In the end, he did not offer and she did not ask and the two walked south, hands to themselves.

* * *

Stories always told of gods watching the world from their places on high, lounging in their power, watching humans toil and burn and maim. Prayers would be lifted to them, but still they watched, content to let man fail. Then every so often they would get bored or tire with the blood of another and descend to the earth, their feet kissing the ground. Every so often a god would descend and bring destruction.

Some called grisha witches, wizards, malignancies of nature, cancers that must be eliminated. The amount of times the Darkling had been likened to a rat over the years was nauseating. As the frost lessened and the forests became Ravka, Alina asked him what they were. She knew the answer as the asked, but the delight in her black eyes pulled the words from him.

“Gods.” The Darkling’s mouth turned up. 

No one asked for gods by name, not those with any sense: saints were kinder and gods never played fair. But the gods had come down all the same. 


	3. Part Three

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> and we're done :) thanks for stopping by and i hope you enjoyed.

Immolation.

It was not a word Alina would have used to define herself, nor what could she do. Inferni, yes, but not a girl once burdened with light and who was called a saint. She was a bringer of hope, a vanguard against darkness - _his_ darkness and his living scar on the world. But with the _parem_ , oh how the world changed.

“Is this what you wanted?” he asked her. The Darkling was standing close by, perhaps a little too close, but Alina brushed it off. She was past caring about proximity, though old habits died hard. Old habits and old fears. Whatever she was now did not fear him - even on _parem_ they were evenly matched - but she could not deny that she wanted to flinch whenever he came by.

It didn’t escape his notice. The hint of a smile crept at the corner of his lips as he continued. “Burnt villages, scorched earth, silenced screams. They’re all for you Alina…”

Smoke carried across the burnt fields towards them, casting them in a shroud. She wanted to Cut him in two, but over the weeks though she tried, he was always there waiting to envelope her shaft of light in a blade of all-encompassing dark. Eventually she stopped trying, but never stopped looking for a blade coming for her. A knife to the chest was not so easily forgotten.

“It’s what you wanted,” she found herself saying.

He didn’t deny it. The Darkling only absorbed her words and followed her silently as she walked away from the ruined valley.

Something warm rolled down her cheek and delicately she touched it with her fingertip. For once she was surprised it was not blood. A tear. Alina could not remember the last time she cried.

 _What do demons fear?_ She had asked him that long ago. Or was it not that long ago? Days? Weeks? How many months passed since she found him on the frost frozen ground of Tsibeya? It didn’t matter; her words haunted her all the same.

 _Gods_ , she had breathed. It was innate in every man across the earth to fear them. The world itself knew to run when they walked on its face. Men scattered before them when they crested hills. But her demon did not fear her, nor did she fear him. Instead a pit of despair grew and coiled inside, waiting and watching. Alina regarded it carefully, preciously.

It sneered at her and ate away at the bits of humanity Alina hid from the world, what she hid from him. Quickly she cast a glance his way. The Darkling’s hair was long and held by a cord, black as the night that so carefully shrouded him. The bruises and weariness that clouded his face when she found him disappeared in the wake of the _parem_ , leaving perfection in its place.

Alina knew she was no different. She was a tired woman when the Fjerdans took her long ago and now she walked the world with the strength of suns. _Parem_ gave her back what Ilya Morozova demanded she pay for power. Parem on the other hand gave willingly. Parem only asked and took her soul in return, though Alina was not sure how much of that was left.

 _I have more practice with eternity_ , he had said once. The ease with which the Darkling bore his _parem_ was nearly frightening. Only the change in his eyes, the jet black pupils and rims of granite, showed any difference from the man who once chased her across oceans.

Alina stopped by a pool and where she once would have gasped she only stared. She did not recognize the face that looked back at her. Filled with the health blessed to all Grisha, her angled features were filled and her skin glowed and her hair hung in a white halo. She was beautiful, otherworldly, a fierce thing - far from war trodden girl who was pulled from Keramzin. The ache grew at the loss of what she was. But what had she really missed? Alina Starkov, a dead saint, a broken Summoner with a dead man in her orchard.

The pain grew at the thought of Mal and of the day on the dead sands. Vaguely Alina wondered what he would think of her now, dressed in rags and burning dirt under her feet but with the power of the stars in her hands. Alina could just hear his voice in her ear and his arm around her, and for a moment she wanted to lean into his touch. But she opened her eyes and the arm was not his and this life was not that one and Mal was dead. He had died to make her a Saint, but even that failed. She shrugged away his memory and looked at her footsteps. Perhaps now she was giving his death a proper testament.

But then she thought of his eyes, his blue eyes and the softness of his lips and her reassurance disappeared. She was not his Alina anymore. She hadn’t been for a while. Her stomach turned at the thought of the scorched valley behind her.

And she was not sure Mal wouldn’t hesitate to shoot her down.

~|~

She was a living sun walking the earth and he was the vast empty reaches in space. She cast away his shadows. But even sun’s orbit black holes. 

~|~

Fjerda burned first.

Not all of it mind, they weren’t monsters. Gods can be merciful and when the correspondence from the Ice Court came, the heat of suns died and the suffocating night relented. Grisha were freed. Drüskelle bowed. And _parem_ was theirs.  

When they walked through the wake of their destruction, people ran from their path and hid in their homes. Women hid their children and men scowled from doorways. The Darkling didn’t wince, didn’t seem to notice. He almost smiled. Alina nearly cringed.

When they passed outposts, drüskelle pulled their banners and burned them at their feet. Thoughts of Zoya and Genya and the Little Palace and David and her friends rushed her mind. Toyla and Tamar. Nadia. Were any of these theirs? Were they broken by the Ice Court and their robes sewn into trophies?

The ache opened again and as they crossed the border into Ravka, Alina couldn’t resist the pull to head west. It was only his hands on her arm that kept her moving south. It only took one look into the Darkling’s eyes to know where he was going and Alina couldn’t resist the pull to follow. Ravka could wait and would wait and Alina knew its time was coming.

~|~

When he touched her, she still felt the rise of surety that flowed from his being. Even with the scar on his chest, he retained that gift. He was still her amplifier, her only amplifier. The _parem_ was her fuel, but he was her stag and she would not let him go. When they stood on the border to Shu Han at the crest of the mountains, he held her hand as she called the sun and slowly their world burned.

~|~

He felt cold to her. That’s what she decided when they lay down at night.

His pale perfect skin was not all that different next to hers, but it still stood out in the dark. Between him and the _parem_ she had want for little else. Not long ago she would have rather died than be with the Darkling, but that was a different time and she was a different girl and she had not burned worlds to get what she wanted. And she wanted him now.  

Still on certain quiet nights she couldn’t ignore the feeling of betrayal in her chest. It was an old feeling, but old feelings still lingered. Long ago she left him for Mal, but Mal was dead and Mal would not recognize her anymore. She was another creature, a different Alina. His match, his Summoner, his Alina.

And he was the only one who would understand.

Slowly she sighed under the stars. The taste of _parem_ was always on her lips, a familiar spice and warmth that tingled with each breath. The Darkling shifted beside her and Alina stilled. It was hard to break old habits. But in the dark, against the gentle sigh of each breath, Alina could not help but be fascinated by the curve of his jaw, so unchanged from the man she met many years ago.

When she closed her eyes, it was to the sound of his breathing that she finally found sleep. But every morning she woke alone, the Darkling standing not far away, looking north with a furious longing.

It filled Alina with unease. They knew she was alive. The story of a sun goddess would be enough to pique any king’s attention, but Nikolai was no ordinary king. Alina waited and waited and prayed and pleaded, but she knew with each passing day and with each nation that fell under their feet that it would only be a matter of time before Ravka joined her subjects.

Their subjects.

And it was Ravka he wanted. He wanted her and her alone. Fjerda and Shu Han were consolation, Ravka the real prize. The others paid for their crimes against grisha, but Ravka would bow like she always would. The Darkling and his dark magic were created in her hardship. He was entwined in her history, as much as she was in his, and for all that was left in her Alina could not keep him from her.

On the day they crossed into Ravka they marched across the former Shadow Fold hand in hand, towards the long lines of the First Army. The Darkling clapped his hands and the sky went dark: despite the day, the sun was blind and the moon shone far across the sky. Alina bathed in its light and called it forth: cool and refreshing and blinding and powerful.

The First Army fled immediately, the memory of the Shadow Fold fresh in their minds and the sight of a Sun Summoner at the hand of a Darkling lead for little for resistance.

Still Ravka did not escape unscarred. Moonlight can blind and the power of suns can pierce the cold dark and Alina watched it unfold with an unusual level of satisfaction. Ravka owed her nothing and she owed it nothing in return, but it still heralded a homecoming and Alina couldn’t deny the thrill that the nation was hers once again.

She sat in the ashes of her destruction. He stood not too far away. By this point the snows covered enough of the ground that it was unsure if it was soot or snow. Ravka burned by not before Nikolai bowed. He and his staff left for the colonies the next day. Alina guessed they would be back before long - Nikolai was not one to be put down easily.

But good kings bow before gods and Nikolai was a good king. For now.

His carriage rolled by, followed by a stream of colored coaches from the Little Palace. Not all grisha craved the rule of gods. Alina only shrugged at the sight. At least they would live, she thought. She would not have to see them fall. But those that stayed thrived under their enlightenment and the gift of the _parem_.

But despite the Darkling at her side and the throne at her back, Alina could not erase Nikolai’s face on the day he left Os Alta. His stare as his carriage passed her in the streets was one of hate.

He had offered her a kingdom and she had declined. Now she returned with a dark terror only to wrench it from his grasp. She was dressed in rags and he was dressed in gold, but Alina knew Nikolai would never forget her.

She only hoped that when they met again it would not be for the last time.

“You let them take me,” she had whispered as the carriage rolled away. He didn’t hear. “I brought myself redemption and resolution. I am beyond your petty comprehension.”

The words fell on deaf ears, but the Darkling heard and whispered in her ear. “They will never understand us, Alina. They never would have.”

And he was right. She let the carriage roll away.

~|~

Fire is light. Light is heat. Light was hers and it would burn for her. The sun was a ball of light and a ball of fire. She was the Sun Summoner, the goddess that walked the earth, and the sun was hers to command in all its glory.

One day laying in fields of wheat she looked up at the sky and waved her hand. The sun slowly faded and the sky went dark. Alina grinned. She was not at Darkling, but light was hers to call or recede. She could make it dark; she could make it day or night. The power of the sun in her hand.

The Darkling smiled. With a twist of his hands, tendrils of black crept across the sky as she released the sun back to shine. His darkness curled into a ball in a perfect recreation of his old sigil.

Screams carried from the valley at the sudden eclipse. She nearly laughed as she forced the sun back through the dark. Soon cries of praise carried to them. Sinners and saints, gods and saviors. In a single breath they could jump between the two.

Alina found herself taking to that easily, as she played with the light of stars in her hands and their power flowing in her veins.

“There are places out there,” he would tell her when they lay down at night. “Where its only darkness. Where it’s so thick, so heavy, that it swallows suns.”

She turned against him and looked into his dark eyes. “If you bring that here, I will stop you.”

He kissed her forehead lightly. “I know.”

~|~

“Why did you come and find me?” he would ask one day when their world had stopped burning and hate and distrust had leveled out into something more sinister. Her hair would be scattered across him, her head in the crook of his arm. Her skin would become familiar. He did not have to say any more as she turned her head and looked to him, her lips parted and her breath kissing him.

“You were there,” she would eventually say. “I saw you in the dark from the light.”

She turned in the light of her own dawn and placed a kiss on his lips, her taste mingled with the sweetness of parem. He was addicted and the Darkling vaguely wondered which drug held him tighter.

“It’s bright in the sun. Shade is a hard thing to pass up.”


End file.
